A datacenter (data center/datacenter), which is also called a server farm, is used for placing a computer system and its relevant communication components such as a backup power supply device, a redundant data communication connection and a device relating to environment control and security, and is an important infrastructure for enterprise informatization. The datacenter is a center for providing, by the enterprise, application business service relevant to all kinds of information, it is also the center for data computing, switching and storing. The datacenter, which combines advanced computing modes, network techniques and storing techniques, provides a platform for running information service of the enterprise. The datacenter in prior art usually consists of servers, TOR (Top Of Rack) switches, aggregation layer switches and a core layer switch and etc., which are organized in a three-level tree structure shown in FIG. 1, where the servers act as leaf nodes in the tree structure and connect to the TOR switches via 1 Gbps network interfaces, the TOR switches, the aggregation layer switches and the core layer switches respectively act as the nodes of the tree, each of the TOR switches connects to the aggregation layer switch via an interface with a higher rate, such as 10 Gbps, each of the aggregation layer switches further connects to the core layer switch via an interface with a higher rate, such as 40 Gbps, thus, the closer a switch approaches the root node, the more switching capacity the switch needs to provide so as to meet the demand.
With the development of novel applications such as video streaming, social network and cloud computing and etc., requirements for the datacenter are becoming higher and higher, for example, application programs managed on the servers of the datacenter (such as cloud computing applications, search engines and etc.) need to exchange mass data among the servers of the datacenter. Thus, an efficient interconnect solution needs to be designed in the network constituted by datacenters, so as to provide a higher bandwidth and a lower delay, however, the limitations of technologies, such as the backplane technology and the energy consumption technology, make the electrical switching technology cannot met the bandwidth and the delay required by the datacenter.
In order to solve the aforementioned problem, a network architecture for the datacenter, which is a C-through architecture as shown in FIG. 2, is proposed in the prior art, the C-through architecture is a datacenter network with a hybrid network structure formed by mixing the optical circuit switching and the electrical packet switching. In the C-through architecture illustrated in FIG. 2, the datacenter is constituted by an electrical network and an optical network. The electrical network provides a network in which servers are full interconnected, the architecture of the electrical network, which is consistent with the architecture in prior data, is a three-level tree structure including TOR switches, aggregation layer switches and a core layer switch. The optical network is constituted by a configurable optical circuit switching device, and can provide an optical link between two racks, so that the two racks can communicate with each other at a very high rate.
When a long data stream transmission takes place between two TOR switches, such as a communication connection lasting for 1 s, the central controller configures an optical circuit connection with a high rate and a wide bandwidth for this pair of TOR switches, the two TOR switches then communicates through the optical network, and for other TOR switches, if only small amount of data transmission takes place, then the other TOR switches still communicates through the electrical network. In this way, the optical network takes over the switching of the long data streams, while the electrical network takes over the switching of the short data streams.
In the datacenter network according to the prior art, the configurable optical circuit switching device is primarily responsible for the switching of the long data streams, when the long data streams such as data backup are the main part of the data streams in the network, the optical circuit switching can provide efficient service, however, when the short data streams such as social services are the main part of the data streams in the network, the optical circuit switching plays a small role.